Recruitment
by TyphoonSignal10
Summary: The woman that the galaxy will come to know as Commander Shepard is running from her old life of petty crime in one of the largest gangs in Los Angeles. She wants to run far, and she wants to run fast. Nowhere is further than space, and nothing is faster than the Mass Relays, so the Alliance is the vessel for her escape.


Service Chief Jack Reacher was watching the clock. Waiting for it to tick down to 1800 so he could close up and go home. It was the most entertaining thing to do in the down town Los Angeles recruitment office, short of messing with the Americans, but that would likely get him disciplined. He glanced across the room at the aforementioned Americans, all three of them. After the clusterfuck that was 2160 Californian war of separation, when the state had tried to go it alone as the New California Republic, there had been very few recruits from the state, especially in the built-up city areas. The Alliance had refused requests for assistance from both-sides, so goodwill towards them was in short supply as well. All this was twelve years ago, but the city had a long memory.

The office wasn't in a bad part of town, but it was close enough to the bad parts to warrant armed security, currently provided by a couple of American Army privates in BDUs and ceramic body armour and helmets.

Reacher looked around the room, there were currently seven people in the building, as usual. The armed security, the American recruiters for the army, air force, and joint coverage for the navy and marines, and finally Reacher himself and his colleague, Corporal Susan Turner. No one else was in the room, no prospective recruits, no wankers looking to take the piss. He looked back at the clock, 1547, two hours, thirteen minutes to go.

This hiss of the automatic doors and the sudden blast of muggy Californian air stirred him from his lethargic state, directing his gaze over towards the door, he got his first look at the arrival. A slight young woman, maybe five-four, light-brown skin and dirty blonde hair pulled back into a scruffy ponytail. Eyes that a more poetic man might have described as ice blue, but which to Reacher were simply blue. A nose kinked from right to left that looked to have been recently broken, and more recently set, badly. The woman's had prominent cheekbones that looked to Reacher to be more from malnutrition than from genetics. She was wearing dirty black cargo pants above battered old combat boots, a t-shirt that may once have white, and a scruffy leather jacket the colour of mud and frayed at the edges. Reacher could also see the presence of an omni-tool mount bracer poking out from the mouth of each sleeve.

The woman stood uncertainly in the door until one of the American soldiers approached her with a small box. The man delivered the standard message about removing all weapons, omni-tools and over offensive equipment and placing them in the box as a safety precaution. The woman nodded and began the process of disarming. First came the omni-tools, left then right. The one on the left wrist looking to be significantly larger than the right. Then came a long-bladed knife in a sheath that looked to match the jacket, probably illegal, but not unusual in this area. Then she unbuckled the belt from around her waist, and Reacher realised that it was a lot bulkier than he had first thought, bulkier than it needed to be to simply hold up her pants. Possibly a kinetic barrier generator?

The soldier asked if she had anything else on her, she shook her head. Reacher made a mental bet with himself that she would go army, no money riding on it, which would turn out to be a good thing, as after a moment's hesitation, she turned and headed towards him.

Reacher sat up straighter, putting on his much-practised smile that was supposed to be inviting but not creepy. The woman stopped in front of his desk. "I'd like to join the Alliance."

Her voice was small and quiet, like she wasn't used to initiating conversation.

"I see." Reacher summoned his omni-tool, automatically opening to the registration system. "What's your name?"

"Amy- Amelia. Amelia Shepard."

Reacher glanced at her, Amy was a contraction of Shepard, likely a nickname used in place of the longer name, Amelia having been chosen as more appropriate for formal documentation. "Ok. Age?"

"Eighteen."

Reacher had been expecting that. He'd seen this sort of thing before, on the other side of recruitment, raw recruits that had just turned eighteen, joined on their birthday, looking to find something in the military that they hadn't found in the previous life. "Any documentation to prove that?"

The woman looked down at the floor. Reacher felt he knew the answer. "No. I don't have any documentation, of any form."

That was slightly unusual, in Reacher's experience. "None at all? Not even hospital birth records?"

A shrug, "None, I was born on the streets, and I've never been to a hospital. I'm a street rat."

Which made sense, and also lent credence to Reacher's theory that Amelia Shepard was from the bad side of town. He knew the protocol for this, it was left to the recruiters' discretion, meaning he need agreement from Corporal Turner. "Corporal." Turner perked up from her chair in the back. "I need your guess as to this woman's age." Turner nodded and stood up, she rolled her neck and shoulders to deal with the cramps that had come from sitting in that chair all day, doing the square root of fuck all. She approached the desk and looked at the young woman on the other side. She turned to Reacher.

"I'd say she could be eighteen."

"You willing to go on record saying that, Corporal?"

"Aye, Chief."

Reacher turned back to the woman on the other side of the desk, "Ok, Amelia." He retrieved the fingerprint scanner from under the desk, "Place your right-hand in this until the light turns green, then do the same with your left." Amelia nodded and did as requested. "I need to ask, while that's checking, do you have a criminal record of any form? Any previous incidents?"

Amelia opened her mouth, then closed it again. Which was as good as an admission of guilt to Reacher.

"Amelia?"

She looked embarrassed, "Nothing recorded, no arrests."

"But..."

She looked him in the eyes for the first time since entering the building. "Ever heard of the 10th Street Reds?"

Reacher shook his head at the same time that Turner said, "You're a Red?"

"You know of them, Corporal?"

Turner nodded, "Street gang, a big one. You name it, they've probably done it. Kidknapping, extortion, murder, theft, protection rackets, grand theft auto, arson. They're supposed to be highly xenophobic, you won't find any aliens on Red territory."

Reacher turned back to Amelia, "That's a pretty damning list." Then a thought, "You're not just signing up to kill aliens are you?"

Amelia shook her head, "No, signing up to get the fuck out. I was never involved in any of that shit, except the grand theft auto, even then it was indirectly."

"Indirectly?" Reacher raised an eyebrow.

"I was the mechanic, fixed up the vehicles, stolen and the ones owned by the gang members. I fixed things, that was what I did. And I was good at it."

"I see. I just need to speak with Corporal Turner, if you could just wait out here for a moment."  
Amelia nodded as Reacher and Turner entered the back room, which was intended for performing the preliminary medical examination. Reacher looked at Turner who shrugged, "If she wasn't a Red, she wouldn't claim to be. If she is a Red, claiming to not be involved in anything would make her look weak. And, she said she wants out."

"Is that your professional opinion, Turner?"

"Permission to speak freely, Chief?"

"Granted."

Turner relaxed slightly, "I've seen this shit before, they join the gangs as a survival thing, some of them die, some of them enjoy the life, some get stuck, and some run at the first chance they get.

Reacher, the Alliance is always looking for more mechanics and engineers, if she's as good as she says she is, and her fingerprints come back clean, we could probably take her. If we don't, next time we see her face, she'll likely be either dead, or looking at life for murder."

"So we wait for the fingerprint report, is that what you're saying?"

"Yes, chief."

A knock at the door. One of the American soldiers stuck his head round the door. "Sorry, I was told to inform you that all the other recruiters have left, it's just me and private Hicks and your recruit out here now. We're waiting on you."

"Thank you, private."

The soldier lingered in the doorway.

"Do you have something to add, private?"

"Sorry, I couldn't help overhearing part of your conversation, that you're desperate for mechanics and engineers?"

"And?"

"Well. While I was waiting I thought I'd have a poke around in the omni-tools she brought with her." He produced both omni-tools from a pocket in his BDUs. "This one looks like an old Sirta Gecko." He presented the larger of the two. "But it's running programs that the gecko hardware could never hope to run without burning the user's arm off."

"What programs is it running, private." Reacher was quite happy to let Turner do the talking, she was much better at the technical stuff than he was.

"It's got overload, incinerate, cryo blast, energy drain, shield boosters. It's also carrying quite advanced diagnostic software. All of which are running at much higher levels than even a gecko mark ten could cope with, and this is a mark three."

"That's impossible." Turner said.

The private nodded, "That's what I thought, so I jacked it open." He peeled back the casing and pointed to a rectangular grey structure surrounded by boxes, lights and wires. "That's the old gecko processor, everything else is aftermarket, added later, likely by the owner. In addition, none of the combat applications are standardized, they've all been tweaked slightly to provide more defensive capability."  
"You think she did all of this?"

The private shrugged, "Yes, corporal, I do."

"And the other 'tool?"

"This one's an old Nokia Liitäntä. It's had everything stripped out and only serves one purpose."

"Which is?"

In response, the American strapped the Nokia to his right forearm and activated the program. A foot long blade of orange light emitted from the end of the device, out past his wrist.

"She's specced it to produce an omni-blade. This is the only application on the device, everything else has been scrubbed so this can run as efficiently as possible." He made a gesture and the blade disappeared.

Reacher spoke for the first time since the conversation had turned to engineering matters. "That's fairly impressive."

"Indeed, chief." Turner replied, "I'm thinking that if she comes back clean and passes the ASVAB and the PME, then we send her off to the MEPS, ASAP."

Reacher pinched the bridge of his nose, "You know I hate it when you talk in acronyms."

Turner grinned, "Aye, Chief."

Reacher turned back to the American, "Thank you, private. Wait outside with your colleague, we should be done in about fifteen."

The American nodded and left, shortly followed by Reacher and Turner.

The fingerprint scan had come back empty, no record of those fingerprints with any police department anywhere on Earth, no record from any hospital anywhere. Amelia Shepard was like a ghost in the system. Her ASVAB results had come back with average scores on general science, arithmetic reasoning, word knowledge, paragraph comprehension and mathematics knowledge, but significantly higher than average in auto and shop information, mechanical comprehension and electronics information. The only minor hitch had been during the medical examination when Amelia had found out that for the scanner to work correctly she would have strip down to her underwear. She had insisted that Corporal Turner be the one to conduct the exam, and that Reacher leave the room for the duration. Reacher had acquiesced, but it left him concerned. According to Turner, Amelia was slightly underweight and undernourished, and suffered from slight near-sightedness, all of which could be easily corrected by standard Alliance gene therapy. Two weeks later, the shuttle out of Oxnard Alliance Base contained twenty fresh recruits to both the Alliance Navy and Alliance Marines, including Private 2nd Class A. Shepard 5923-AC-2826.


End file.
